Russell case

Russell, what is your background before yoga?

Hi Lu,

I know I am being a little obtuse here, but I just want to ask for further definition.First of all (hee hee) there is nothing before yoga, after yoga, or during yoga - at least in some states of consciousness and/or development now, and for all of us.

Uh.. Second, do you mean before I started teaching yoga?

I was in art school a long time.. for a really, long time. I was at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago studying Marxism, Performance Art, Abstract Expressionism, and Retinal Painting full time from when I was 16 to 27, and when I graduated with an MFA from Mark Rothko’s School of Art in NY in 2003 as Guy Donahaye’s mysore room apprentice I was endowed with myriad abilities to define space… ad nauseum.​For me I like to look at pockets of history though; my brother David calls this Foucaultian. I started doing Ashtanga Yoga in 1993 in Chicago. Before that, I was in high school in Louisiana doing yoga in my bedroom with Lilias Folan (I wish) shoulder stand, surya namaskar, child pose, lotus. I remember doing backbends like salabhasana in the 4th grade with a progressive P.E. teacher in Southern Illinois.

All the religious iconography we had in the house was Buddhist because my mom ran a Persian pillow company business she called Satori. When I was 5 years old my dad got out of federal prison (he was in great shape) and we liked doing something similar to surya namaskar together using a rolling pin he made with his welding kit. I used that thing until the berings fell off.

But talk about losing your bearings… I am way off your question.

Yoga is immersion.

Once, I asked Richard Freeman about his first yoga class. He said “I was on the University of Chicago campus quad. I pulled out a vial of a magic potion and we all dropped dots of it on our tongues. Then I read from the Tibetan Book of the Dead.” I was in Taiwan driving him around the city, “That was your first yoga class?” I asked, astonished. He said “Yes” and raised an eyebrow.So my first yoga class was in 1989 in Allerton Park near Champaign-Urbana. We dropped acid, walked around watching the planes of our eyes oscillate in the sunshine and then watched Ken Russell films all night until I cried out in terror.

Ken Russell’s the Devils 1971

What led you to Ashtanga? How did you find Guruji and what was that experience of practicing with him like?

It’s so interesting to parse these words! I was in NY once with a senior teacher and he was talking about being a seeker. I remember being a little put off by him and his endless train of girlfriends. I guess he was seeking.

My brother though gave me a copy of the Tao te Ching when I was in High school. There is a passage:

​ The supreme good is like water, Which nourishes all things without trying to. (chapter 8)​Which is to say that I am led. Watching and being led… Admiringly so.

I was led to Ashtanga Yoga. I had had all these experiences growing up with self-discipline, and yoga postures, and calisthenics, and meditative absorption, and still I was in Art School in Chicago in 1993 working in the graduate school office as a receptionist resisting Ashtanga Yoga. The Graduate secretary and I were buddies, and she was real big into Ayurveda and doing tricks in the office, like guessing what folks liked doing based on their constitution. She told me I had to go - and I just thought that was insane! It was roughly $1800 a semester, which worked out to be about $75 bucks a class, coming straight out of my student loans. Well.. she convinced me, and so I guess in this sense I was led to it and led in it. I ended up taking the class every term for the next 3 ½ years.

The Ashtanga class was run by Suddha Weixler (Adolph). He was Austrian, in his 50’s maybe and very severe and very quiet. I was amazed by him. Simply dumbfounded. As David Williams said, “Where I grew up folks got old and sick… They didn’t get old and wise.” Suddha was magnificent. Self-possessed, reserved, limber, and wickedly wiry strong. He just seemed like exactly the kind of man I wanted to grow up to be.

In that class I kept hearing about Guruji. Students would speak up and ask Suddha about him,

“Yes, there is only 10 of us in the class”“Yes, he is very strong” “Suddha, I heard this guy stood on a student and hurt his back?”“Suddha, I heard Pattabhi Jois popped somebody’s hamstring?”

And yet Suddha kept coming back from Mysore lean, tanned and glowing. I told him once, “You look great,” he was always super uneasy with this sort of praise.

He had lived in Rishikesh for 7 years as a celibate on the Sivananda ashram and had taken the precepts, the yamas and niyamas, very seriously. He was still celibate at that time, though now I understand he has a Porsche and a girlfriend… So the yoga is working for him.

When Guruji gave me his blessing to teach Ashtanga yoga many, many years later, Suddha wrote a letter to me expressing his pleasure with me and I have to say nothing has given me more pride.

At any rate, I knew I wanted to go to India and I wanted to meet Guruji. Even when I was in NY as Guy’s apprentice in 2001 Suddha wrote to me and implored me to “get as close to the source as you can.” Guy completely agreed with this notion.

The energetic quality I was seeking - this strength of will and of character - these Ashtangis seemed to be imbued with it. A glow. I get so jazzed meeting old students of Guruji. It reminds me of Anne Rice’s Vampire Lestat. Every time Lestat would meet some new old vampire from out of another century their ancient strength and beauty would scare and terrify him. That’s how it feels to meet Annie Grover or Kathy Cooper or Ricky Heiman or Joanne Pelletier or Louise Ellis - Their beauty is terrifying.

Al Lewis as Grandpa Munster on the Munsters 1964

Guruji came to NY in 2001, which I missed, and I bitterly resent that. The fucking internet just wasn’t truly operational at that point. I was across town and had no idea how to get there or how to sign up or anything. In 2002 he came back, and I so finally practiced with him at the Puck building.

The first day I was downstairs at the subway transferring from the 2 on the red line to the 6 trying to get uptown. It’s 4:30 am. Waiting. A long time… still waiting. I see a cat for sure... one of the old ones. It’s obvious. Like Suddha, he is lean, quiet, patient. Ancient… but who knows how old? He’s got a yoga mat. It’s hard for young people to understand this now, but in those days nobody walked around with a yoga mat. I had one and we made eye contact.​“Guruji?” he asked.I said “yeah.”He said “Let’s get a cab.”I wasn’t going to argue. He just oozed power, and I did not have the cash to afford a cab, but whatever. I got in with him.

He said his name was Dom and he was one of “the Certified.” I had no idea what that meant, but it was super intimidating.He said, “Have you practiced with Guruji before?”I said “No.” He said, “Then this is your first day practicing Ashtanga Yoga.”

We got out and went into the Puck building, behind rows and rows of white billowing cloth - a lot of Eddie’s students and Jivamukti types were there now taking registration and helping out and putting mats down. I can retroactively remember, Stacey Platt and Spiros; Barry Silver… my mat was between Russell Kai and Michael Gannon in the front row with my mouth open just checking it all out like I was at a rock concert, but the rock stars were here to watch. Like I was sitting with the Mommas and the Poppas at Monteray to see Hendrix.

At that time Joseph Dunham traveled with Guruji and took care of him like a road manager and he wore a blazer, was huge, and made the introduction for the tour stop. He was impressive, like a CEO - And then Guruji did the chant and started the class.

What. A. Voice.

I have heard it on video, but it doesn’t do it justice. It just booms out. And commands. Huh… I used present tense there. He still seems alive to me.

In class I just tried to keep breathing along and he even adjusted me once in parsvokonasana. I felt incredibly blessed. He just changed the angle of the posture a little with my hand. It was like magic and I feel him there every time I do the pose now still today. I touched his feet after class and was so pleased. Every day it was like 300 people in line to touch his feet. I really felt like he saw me too. He could just do that… See you.

My first trip to Mysore I was really feverish one day, but went ahead to class and tried to tough it out. I just managed the standing sequence and then I was done - So wasted. As I was leaving the shala he came to the door and in that high pitched voice he said “You stopping?” I said “Guruji... Head” and made a little hand gesture near my temple like I was stupid. “Oooo K” he said. I drove home on my bike, on fire… Exhilarated.

He had noticed.

Through your own practice with Guruji, on your own as a student and now as a teacher, what is the distillation of Guruji’s teaching?

I would have to say Will, “No Fearing”… and Comedy.

His teaching was the will to live. The will to persevere. The will to endure and thrive. Off the top of my head I would say that Noah Williams best represented this to me as a fellow practitioner. It seems outside of LA Noah’s profile is pretty low because you don’t see him on social media. Young people today need to know about Noah. Legend.

Just watching his lightness, strength, and massive flexibility was a real inspiration for me. We are exactly the same age and started the practice in the same year, but he gives real credence to the notion of inherited karma. The dude grew up right down the block from Tim Miller. I never got to practice in Mysore with Tim or Eddie or Richard (on Tour, sure) so I can’t speak to their Will in the practice room, but Guruji was once asked what student today most reminded him of himself as a young man… “Noah” he said.

When Guruji told us to do something - Noah did it.

In 2007 I was invited to join Guruji’s pranayama class. At that time only a very select crew of Certified students were invited… 3rd series finishers only… Hamish, Kino, Alex, Lino… that crew. I’m not sure what happened, but we think (those of us invited prematurely like this -- Nick or Harmony for example) we think, he was inviting a few students of our new generation who he thought would finish - maybe invite us before he died, we thought. I remember Johnny Smith for example complaining to Noah in front of me “I thought only people who finished Advanced A were allowed in here?” Noah just shrugged and I tried to disappear into the floor.

The day I wasinvited I was having a bit of a weird day. I woke up as usual for intermediate class on Sunday 3 hours before class and started going through my two hour backbend sequence. I am not a back bender. But, I got it in my head that I needed to compete with Noah if I was going to “be competitive.” At some point you have to give that up, you know? You just have to be Russell Case -- no matter how unsatisfying that is.

Right about when I finished my last eka pada raja kapotasana “practice pose” I kinda realized that it felt late. Like something wasn’t quite right. I asked my roommate at the time and discovered I had just missed the start time of class. So nuts… So mad.

My clock batteries had died. I just hung my head and practiced there in my living room, then shamefully walked to the shala because it was Shala Fees day and I had to catch Guruji in the office to pay him. I walked in and it was a real sweat fest… Everybody looked at me like ‘Lucky Boy… you missed a tough one.’ Michael Gannon was on his knees in front of Guruji and he was just getting reamed, “You forgetting all your postures!?!”

So... at least I wasn’t going to get the brunt of it... I hoped.

I walked into the office with Guruij and started laying down bills for him. Guruji had a money counter at this time, which David Swenson had given him (three actually). It made this whole process much quicker. “Guruji, are we having conference today?” I asked.

He said, “No.. pranayama.”I said “ok” and waited while he counted.

“Ten-Thirty” he said.I looked up at him… Astonished. I opened my mouth. I said “Guruji… You want me to come to the pranayama class??” He said, “Yes… You Come.”

This was so crazy to me that not only had I missed led-intermediate and walked into his office like I was on my Ladies Holiday, clean and dry, but that he was also remembering me in the first place and telling me to come to the holy of holies.

10:30am I walked in with the other noobs and we just stared at each other open-mouthed, like what the hell were we up for? I won’t kid you… He was glorious - Shirt off, powerful and barrel chested, and dangling bling bling. I spurted snot out of my nose trying to hold his count. I felt deranged in there. He had a few students he liked yelling at -- like Lino. Fabio had brought a cheat sheet for us all to use to keep up with the chant, and Guruji just laid into Lino one day about why he had one.

“Ah… Guruji… You know… It’s nothing… Vande gurunam, Guruji. Come on.” I had never done anything in that room that so addressed my capacity for terror. Never try holding your breath after you exhale.

A month later I walked into Guruji’s office to pay again. I was searching for some trigger to get him talking. If you could find the right thing to say he would go off… Like mention Desikachar for instance and watch him spin. I said to him, searching…

“Guruji… This new pranayama we are doing is very scary… I am scared.” He looked up at me.

“Nadi Shodhana, Guruji.” “Why you fearing?!?” Guruji said. This was a big deal for Guruji… Fear is the mind killer. You do!

“You have wife.” Guruji said.“Huh?” I said.“Wife is good accountant… You No Fearing.”

I just chuckled at him and he lit up and twinkled at me.​

Kyle MacLachlan in David Lynch’s Dune, 1984

We had kinda started out this way… With smirks. Back in 2003 he was still backbending folks and holding them there with their head on the floor -- now there is just too many of us. Back then he wanted you to stand up from this position by yourself! I couldn’t do it. I kept trying and he kept having to lift me up, and finally one day he got annoyed and just let go of me and I landed on my head… and dribbled (the “Pattabhi Dribble” David Swenson called it). I just started guffawing there on the floor. So much pain and it just made me laugh my ass off. He lifted me up. He looked at me and sneered, disgusted. I took him by the shoulders and brought my face up to his and stared at him in the face and he just broke up and started giggling.

His sense of humor about your fear was a beautifully disarming mechanism. He would tell you to do, and if you didn’t, he would make you giggle.

I said “Guruji… Was Amma a good accountant?”

“Hmmhm… yes… Saraswathi… No.”

In my teaching, and my own practice actually, the energetic quality is extremely important to me. I like hearing technical stuff, pelvic nutation, adductor firing… Great. I just would prefer to talk about it over breakfast - not while I am practicing. Yoga practice is extremely emotional for me. Breaking through the manomaya kosha is the be-all and end-all. Will your way through a stiff mind. Will your way through a stiff body. Nothing is harder. Laughing at my pain is easy… Surrendering to it is very difficult.

And please, don’t talk to me about the Taittiriya Upanishad while I am practicing. I really don’t want to hear it. I get distracted and I get cold in the best of environments.

I never got a ‘story time’ from Guruji... “Relax!” is all I got. He would bellow it.

And you’ll hear me bellow that in class sometimes. Though mostly it’s silent in my room and I am only adjusting and listening. My hands are listening to you. That’s what I saw from Guruji. That’s what I feel from ParamaYogi Guru Sharath Jois. Observation. Observation in the hands. It’s like Foucault’s Panopticon in there. They are always watching you watch.

No fearing. Surrender. Relax…did Guruji believe the practice can help one know God or self?​Oh Yes! Absolutely. Guruji discussed the union of knowing God and practice, consistently and often. It reminds me of a story… (And before you start rolling your eyes at another story let me just say… Everything is God).Once I was in Finland. It was October 2006, I think, on my way to a gig in Taiwan. Juha, Hanne, Tanja, Lino, Ilpo, and Petri organized a tour stop in Helsinki. Fins are incredible... 400 practitioners in a gymnasium and you could have heard a pin drop. Wow. These forest people are quiet - whispery.​

(I liked Petri a lot and practiced with him in NY right after Guy and Lori had their baby Ruby. Petri is very comfortable in his own skin and the most like a human panther I have ever encountered - Such a beautiful dude. Every morning for a year I commuted an hour and a half from Flatbush to work with him and every morning we would squash our genitals together in dropbacks. Really, I would ask myself… “Why am I here, God?”)

Tim Feldman backbending a student (and squashing his genitals)

So we’ve finished the practice in Helsinki. Saraswathi, Sharath, and Guruji are propped up in chairs and looking at the quietest, most shy, and reserved room of human beings on the known planet. Everyone is frozen and staring at him. Guruji is just sitting there… Stillness.

I raise my hand.​“Guruji… Does Ashtanga Yoga destroy samskaras?”Guruji sat there for a while… (such great timing)… Then he leaned over to Sharath and whispered something inaudible. Sharath (ParamaYogiGuru) looked over at me.“Yes.”

The crowd broke up laughing, and then Guruji started in on his 72,000 nadi lecture which was, always for me, completely unintelligible.

To this point Guruji would often comment on the notion of pratyahara. He would sit in his chair (or throne) and slam the wall, “Pratyhara is seeing everything God! This wall - God! Everything God!”

Little bit by little bit this notion started to seep in. We do these manifest yama-niyamas, our minds become more clear for practice, and not as distracted by divorce, defamation, or libel suits and lululemon, or any other horrifying disorganizations. Our bodies are light and strong, and courses like Goenka’s 10 day Vipassana become ridiculously easy… just vacations really. We do pranayama until we are no longer afraid of dying. Our citta becomes restrained from our sense organs. That is, we start observing that we like or dislike the things we see with equanimity. They just are what they are. This is pratyahara, and it spontaneously arises with practice.

Hopefully.

Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 6: Sankhya-yogaVerse 7“For one who has conquered the mind, the Supersoul is already reached, for she has attained tranquility. To such a woman happiness and distress, heat and cold, honor and dishonor are all the same.”

I like this painting at the Frick in Manhattan by Bellini. It’s St. Francis in Ecstasy (The Ecstasy of St. Theresa by Bernini is another magnificent example).

St. Francis is walking out of his cave, clearly having endured a tapas of long suffering asceticism. He is opening his arms almost like he is opening into Ekam-Inhale. His mouth open, forehead relaxed, and his palette dropped. All before him in crystalline detail, and to his eyes all minutiae, dripping with Godstuff.

It all IS.

St. Francis in Ecstasy by Giovanni Bellini, 1480

​Given the number of students worldwide traveling to study in Mysore versus what you experienced with Guruji, it seems naturally difficult to develop a personal teacher-student relationship in Mysore with Sharath. What are your thoughts? What should students seek when traveling to the source?

There is a real answer here and there is a metaphysical one… And there is what happens.

The parampara lineage is predicated on upi and shat. By and sitting. Which is it to say upanishad“sitting next to.” We learn by sitting next to our teacher. Sitting next to Sharath is feeling him. Going to Mysore and to Gokulum is to feel his intelligence and his critical perception and to be blazed by it.Sitting next to your teacher physically transforms you. We are a highly reactive species that is especially influenced by our environment.

You feel that, don’t you? -- When someone’s brain is hyper-vigilant and operating in a Beta wave pattern of rapid executive decision making all the time... you can just sense it. Their amygdala is perhaps thick from the constant flooding of the stress hormone cortisol originating perhaps from excessive trauma or exposure to violence. The hypothalamus and emotional memory center is struggling with poor circulation. I am describing a combat veteran. I am describing a professional boxer. I am describing an orange haired executive. You feel that person’s pain... no?

Try then sitting next to Richard Freeman.

Sitting next to Richard is an exercise in Vagal stimulation. As he breathes, you breathe. As his palette drops and his eyes relax, so do yours. And as your throat and mouth drop so does the vibrational frequency of the brain. The wave literally widens. You drop from a Beta to an Alpha to a kind of dream state in Theta. The nucleus accumbens drops dopamine onto the amygdala. Subsequently, the endocrine function floods the circulatory system with oxytocin and we begin to experience euphoria more consistently, more constantly. I imagine sitting next to Ramana Maharshi must have felt very similar.

Ramana Maharshi

We go to Mysore to sit next to.We practice asana to learn how to sit.

The metaphysical answer is that you are bound to the brain that your samskaras create. I can’t help how fucked up my childhood was, nor that it led me to make these decisions to suffuse myself with therapeutic modalities. I am highly sceptical that I making any decisions here at all.

One time I asked Richard this same question, about the huge number of students now flooding Mysore, and getting adequate facetime with the teacher.

“Richard… It’s so different now. We don’t have this special intimate opportunity that you and Tim and Eddie had with Guruji. (Here is where I made my riposte, but he feints, counter parries, and explains the Koshas to me) How can I get that special relationship? Where can I find it?”

He said “Russell… You’re just five heaps of rubbish.”

What happens though, is that this generation of spectacular athletes (of course this is unfair to the horde of nervous, stiff, and benevolent first timers) go to Mysore to wave their flag and bang their drum to demonstrate their conviction, expertise, and ambition.

The teacher responds.

Sometimes ferociously, and sometimes he responds with gentleness. Sometimes he smiles and sometimes he snarls. I prefer the nice responses and so I seek them out. On a weird day, I do test the line in the sand and I am rewarded… (most times I make a total ass of myself.)

I think you have to be really careful with your motivations… Especially with this practice. All your emotions and fears and desires are right out there on the fucking surface of your mind. The water of citta is turgid and frothing with your thoughts. A mysore room teacher sees it.

And this guy, Sharath, sees it pretty much before you walk in the door -- He sees it at registration.Is your motivation to be a member of the family? Do you want to take his name and get his cell phone number and sell his t-shirts? ‘cuz I wanted all those things and got my share of lessons that all came with it. Or do you want to simply learn to sit properly, breathe, and love your family for who and what they truly are?

​For those that haven’t experienced it, Russell. Why do teachers say, “Sharath is a guiding light for me. He’s an example.” Can you reflect on this from your own personal experience?

I asked Sharath once about my samskaras. You know there has been a lot of trauma, a lot of bad marriages, and a whole hell of a lot of drug abuse in my family. You don’t just get reborn as the Dalai Lama when you come from a 1000 year lineage of gin drinking truckers.

I said, “Sharath, my samskaras are so bad, how can I truly transform into a yogi?” He is so disarming sometimes…

He kind of snorted and said, “Ha! My samskaras are also so bad!”

It was so nice to hear that from him. No matter that his grandfather is a generational yoga master and that he grew up with him in Mysore. No matter that no one alive has accomplished what he has done in this Ashtanga Yoga lineage. Maybe he is thinking what he could have done if he had been born a complete package like his uncle Ramesh... or had a physical vehicle like Mark Yeo.

I was in Australia once assisting Manju P. Jois. Manju is a wealth of stories about the old days and about his father and his family. It was a very nervy thing to ask him about his younger brother, but all the same he was family and he loved him and answered very calmly and quietly that Little Ramesh was an Asana and Sanskrit savant and would have inherited everything had he only remained alive. He was like a little Adi Shankar only standing on his hands all day.

Mark Yeo is something else all together. Mark and I started Ashtanga the same year. He was in Adelaide in David Roche’s shala with Andrew Hillam. Mark was a long lean marathon runner, from Malaysia as I understand. For 6 months I practiced behind him in the shala and watched him go through the first 7 postures of 5th. I was there the day he started. It was absolutely extraordinary watching him execute this practice. Seeing his contortions, each posture one extreme direction and then the next one exactly opposite -- I could see that this Ashtanga Yoga practice when done at the highest levels is the most acute form of physical suffering.

For Sharath though, it’s a very sweet sense of his own place that he carries. He knows who he is. That by itself is worth more than anything else from a true yoga teacher. He teaches from a place of honesty and of understanding his position in the world. And man… he works hard, yo!

I know his mom gives him a hard time about taking summers off, but remember Guruji taught maybe something as much as 100 students a day during peak season.

Sitting with 12 students from 4:30 to noon in the old shala is a lot different from sitting with and paying attention to 100 students an hour from 4:30 to noon -- as it has been for Sharath in recent years in the new shala. On top of that, practicing hard first… and not sleeping more than four hours.

Yeah, that guy is an example.

He’s got vision too. Understanding that we, as his students and authorized teachers, can use the help and experience of learning how to teach from him (so we don’t get carried away destroying lives and bodies back home) he goes and builds an apprentice system, and that in turn, takes a load off his own back (literally). Very smart.

He knows dedication. He can smell it in you.

It’s like in the book “Guruji” by Guy Donahaye (my former mentor), when Norman Allen spoke of crawling down the stairs of Guruji’s Lakshmipuram home because he was so exhausted, but still compelled to show up and practice with Guruji... except in the case of ParamaYogi Guru R. Sharath Jois, he did it every day for 20 years. He can just feel it -- and somehow senses when a student has sacrificed a great deal to be there to practice with him. ​​Guruji and Sharath’s family philosophy tradition is tied to Adi Shankaracharya. All is One. How does the practice allow us to taste this?

I’ve been thinking about this question and rolling it around my head quite a bit.

I think it’s really tied to compassion for suffering.

In class just this morning at Stanford I was trying something a bit different. This new Russian girl I have as a student has bad sciatica, is recovering from lymphoma surgery, and yet has gymnastic potential. It wouldn’t take long for her to get open and strong. We were working on backbends today after she finished her primary. I had her put her hands against the wall to open her shoulders in urdhva dhanurasana.

(Sharath has mentioned that we can be more creative with beginners and injuries. He would just kind of shrug and say ‘They can use the wall.’)

I was pressing her knees together and pressing the balls of her feet down with my toes and moving the thighs closer to the wall to help her access her shoulders more. She came down, looked at me and said, “That hurts in my lower back.”

I looked back at her and gave her two thumbs up. Really, I didn’t know what else to say.There is some sensation involved in this experience and overcoming a pain threshold is critical to development. As BKS Iyengar said, “Yoga is a painful art.”

So I am looking at her and thinking about how to get her through this experience... and unqualified enthusiasm seemed to be the best way in this specific case. And really, that’s compassion… Because you want the student to learn how to endure suffering, so as to be free of suffering.

I have been where she is. Now, I find myself standing in my teacher’s position trying to help her get through something I also suffered. (ed. note: A couple weeks later I tried having her relax her buttocks and that really helped).Yoga practice at this point is about understanding how all of us experience suffering and realizing that we all seek freedom from suffering. We seek kaivalya. We seek not just detachment, but aloneness. One-ness.

So we have this thing… Multiple sheaths of the self…

The Koshas(5 heaps of rubbish): Body, Energy, Mind, Wisdom, and Bliss… and they are all immediately accessible to us.

Like what James Joyce said about masturbation: “The wonderful availability of it!!”

We practice opening these very delicate and sensitive sheaths as a part of our daily life so that when the big shit hits the fan we can face that monster with equanimity. So Guruji’s Ashtanga Yoga method is this tool that we use to withstand raga-dvesha (craving and aversion). If we face some horrible sensation like stretching our gastrocnemius, and we experience how the breath got us through that, then hopefully, we come back to the breath in times of crisis much more readily. Perhaps even, we begin to understand, many days or months later, that the horridness was impermanent… and this then is the lesson that might allow us to see other’s suffering, as well as our own, as temporary.

Parts of our brain are actually changing size when we do this.

Long time meditators are hard wired to experience more compassion for others. Their anterior cingulate cortex lights up when they see any pain in others. This is evidence of a thin amygdala that has not been overstimulated by violence. Normal people will light up slightly, to a degree, especially when someone they perceive as being ‘on their team’ is in a lot of pain. So you see how a meditator expands the loop of identity? Their team includes you.

Interestingly, the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) drops out when we experience flow. When we become self-conscious or when we are offered money as a bonus the PCC lights up. So entering flow through practice starts the journey towards empathy and a lack of self-consciousness or One-ness... (some might call it: Steph Curry-ness.)

As a side note: the PCC is one of the main areas of the brain that is disabled in alzheimer’s patients.

But back to your question… I believe that moment when you become truly vegetarian -- When you see a mosquito land on your arm, and you feel its need, and allow it to feed… When you look at all living beings as consciousness in suffering… then You Are That.

Guruji and Sharath often talk about the potency of the practice in breath, bandhas, dristhi, and how we move prana energetically with tristhana and asana. What are your thoughts as a teacher and student?

You know, it’s a little humbling to speak to this question. I just met two more of the sacred ancients this last weekend: Dena Kingsberg and her consort Jack. Wow. What extraordinarily beautiful creatures! She and Jack both just exude this old tremendous power that the lifelong Ashtangis hold in their body. Her teaching style seems to reside in this fundamental principle… Where does the tristana reside in the practice? Where is it limited in you? And how does its absence hinder your experience of flow? The process is intense. It’s exactly the kind of truth I seek as a student of yoga.​To uncover what is residing in my breath and bandha pattern that inhibits me, whether it is in backbends or handstands, or just generally in the dharmakshetra and kurukshetra -- The ‘killing fields’ of life, where are our only weapons are: breath, bandha, and focus.

Here with Dena, it’s not that we seek a handstand or we seek depth in our backbends… It’s that we use these postures to find depth in our breath and fearlessness in our heart. Working with Dena and Jack reminded me that Guruji’s teaching was tristhana, using asana to explode any remaining notion of your own precious self, held ever so dear.Blow it up. Burn it to the ground. Scorch the Earth.

My friend, peer, and litter mate, Andrew Hillam and I were sitting with Sharath and his sister Sharmila in Encinitas a couple years ago. We were talking about some esoteric aspect of the Ashtanga practice, like whether it’s important to do yoga or not, and somehow BKS Iyengar came up in the conversation. Sharath said with some distaste, “Iyengar… No tristhana.” In the Iyengar classes I have taken this has been a singular issue that without the breath, the bandha, or the dristi to focus my attention on, I have found it difficult to dissolve into any sense of flow. This function, the inhibiting of the posterior cingulate cortex, is critical to dissolving self-consciousness, which is to say that it can be difficult, without flow, to observe sensation in a neutral and equanimous fashion.

What I do appreciate about Iyengar’s teaching is the emphasis on focusing the mind for long periods of time on the sensation of extension… For example, noticing the disgust and self loathing in the sternocleidomastoids as one backbends and to try staying with the unpleasantness.

“Penetrate the various sheaths of the body to reach the antaryami-- the omniscience-- Brahma.”

-BKS Iyengar

My editor at large on this article-- Harmony Slater, just corrected this question with a quote by Guruji “Tristhana is Breathing, Posture, and Dristi.” She says that the bandhas are held within the breathing-system… Well… I don’t know what to do with that... I guess one could say, for that matter, that the breath and the gazing point are both held within the asana itself. So if you delete bandha you might as well scrap the whole body.

Speaking of BKS Iyengar it reminds me of visiting Guruji in his office one afternoon. He was sitting there with my friend Kimberly (Kiki) Flynn. I popped my head in and she motioned for me to sit down with them and so I smooshed into a chair with her and asked a number of inane questions looking for some story. She was delighted that I tickled one out.

“Guruji… I picked up Desikachar’s new Yoga Taravali. You wrote the forward?”“Huh?” he said.“Yoga Taravali, Guruji.” (I had pronounced it like a valley girl might “Yoga Tar-ah-Valley”).“Huh??”“Yo. Ga. Ta. Ra. Va. Lee.” Kimberly said helpfully.“You wrote the forward for Yo. Ga. Ta. Ra. Va. Lee. Guruji?”“Oh… Desikachar.” He snorted, “Useless… better you study with Iyengar.”

He reached behind him and grabbed the Namarupa with the two of them on the cover. Guruji sneered with contempt, “Now… We are friends” he said, and tossed the magazine at me.

Iyengar and Jois photographed by Mike Hill, 2005

Using Dena Kingsberg as an example. What is it about a consistent, dedicated practice over multiple decades that transforms people? Other teachers have commented on senior teachers including Richard Freeman, Big Tim Miller, Eileen Hall and others having a very similar energetic presence. WHAT is being transformed?

I am thinking of Gazing, Lu. Presence. Dena, like the other extraordinary ancients I have met, have presence— frankly, they gaze at you. They really are here in front of you. They don’t seem to want to be here more than any other place; and yet, here they are appreciating and calculating your essence, your feltness, and your effect on their equilibrium.

The first time I noticed this frank stare, (and I am sure Suddha must have done this to me as well, but I wasn’t really paying attention) was with Noah Williams in NY. It was in the second series class with Guruji that Eddie organized at the Puck building upstairs - and he walked in. I had heard about him from my friend Frances Cole Jones who wrote: How to Wow. She told me that Noah was the youngest person ever certified... Evidently, he was shoved into Guruji’s office by Hamish Hendry –exhorted, “Go get that paper, Man!”

That morning in the Puck building Noah glanced at me sitting on my mat. I felt his calculated appraisal. Who are you? What are you?

Dena embodies this frankness. She appraises so neatly, and with such clarity (which I felt in my limited interaction with her). It seemed like she reduced Guruji’s teachings to their bare essence, which is to say (with jungle medicine) she could perceive the root of a student’s diabolical habit -- whatever was preventing them from seeing the true Self -- and would try to dig it out.

Her adjustments are beautiful and strong... like Guruji or Guy. So much knowledge and confidence there. And she also saw in me some hesitation in my heart --too much apana in the prana pattern. During kapotasana she sat down with me to talk about courage once. “You’ve got all the pieces, Russell. They are all there. You know all the elements of the backbend, and all the players are playing together. Now just let go!”

She just pierced through all the habits of how I held my body, inferred what that meant about me, and went straight to the heart of who I thought I was - and adjusted that.In 1999 the spring before I went to graduate school I was 25 and I decided to revisit LSD again. The last time I was 16, and it was a pretty bad psychotic episode. (‘99 was my last trip -- about 18 years ago). Anyway, I thought it would be a threshold for me to try acid again and test myself against my own mind.

Had the 9 years of yoga done something to me? Had the year in isolation, practicing tapas and meditation in South Korea transformed me -- like a yearlong vipassana retreat might do? Had the sweat worked the fear out of my cells?

So... I got a few tabs from my brother, Dave, and I spent the day at my mom’s house with my golden retriever, Ramses, admiring his frank nudity amidst the rainbows of the day. Throughout the afternoon I wondered how he seemed to have no fear of boundaries at all. Wherever we went or walked he would stop and rub his furry body on the lawn whether it was my neighbor’s or not. Completely naked, mind you. I realized I would never do that, acid trip or not, I was keeping my clothes on. (Am I a nevernude, you ask?

Tobias Fünke.. nevernude

My brother David came home and he decided we would go to his pirate radio show assembly. Davo asked me how I was doing on the way over. I responded (noticing in a kind of peculiarly detached way, that the car seemed to be hydroplaning over the freeway more than pulling us along) “I was painfully aware of Ram’s inability to communicate, whatsoever.”

We parked and arrived at the meeting, all of the volunteers at 90.1X sat in a circle at Stubbs talking about the menu and the programming. I distinctly remember him leaning over to me and whispering at one point “Say your name out loud.” I looked up from the cracks in the concrete, and the green blue Italian light in the sunset, and red brick of Austin, TX’s downtown, and said to the dozens of puzzled and patiently staring radio DJs: “Russell.” I said.​

Something like hours later, (I couldn’t tell) David leaned over to me and said, “I am so sorry. This must be horrifically boring.” I looked up from the cracks in the concrete, and the green blue Italian light of the sunset, and the red brick of Austin, TX’s downtown, and said to him, “This place is as good as any other.”

Pablo Picasso by Modern Lovers

As Picasso said “When inspiration hits me I hope it finds me working.”

This feeling is the vagal experience.When we either have this experience or practice the habit of this kind of face, (as in Ekam or upward dog, or in imitation of the Buddha) the Vagus Nerve is toned beneath our throat and we have a polyvagal response to our environment. It is in this state, which as the eyes soften and the tongue relaxes, there is a greater expansion of our chest in the anterior vagal region, and the stimulation of our genitals, diaphragm, and pelvic floor in the dorsal vagal region. The Vagus Nerve is referred to as the “Wandering Nerve” and so much of our sensual experience of either anxiety, depression, or pleasure manifests along its comprehensive path--the path of the parasympathetic nervous system.

Stimulated, energy surges from our core to our skull -- from the energy centers of muladhara to sahasrara -- (What Dr. Eva Henje Blom at UCSF coined vagal afference). The Vagus Nerve affects our brain wave length. The good news is: We can practice this. The more we engage in activities that activate these neural pathways, the easier and faster these neural pathways will drop into Theta wave processing. We experience greater levels of joy, love, and pleasure, and our sensitivity to anxiety, stress and depression decreases.

There with Noah I finished this second series class in NY somehow. It must have been 2002 or 3. Guy had told me the score and I put myself all the way in the back so I could get stopped with equanimity or at least without any horrible public shaming. Like row 14 or something. The first two rows were BigTim, Kino, and Noah along with all these other freaks. I noticed dutifully as Sharath carefully ripped out the whole back section and stopped them all, one by one. By titibhasana it was like one big dance off. The first two rows were still dancing strong and I was all alone 12 rows back... “dancing with myself.” Sweating. Watching.

We finished and we anted up to go touch Guruji’s feet. I remember as I bowed down, I saw Sharath out of the corner of my eye. I stood up and saw him staring. Gazing.And then this peculiar thing happened:

I saw his eyes concentrate on me and my field of vision became flooded in a sea of white—like a thousand petalled serpent-head of whiteness. Just eyes in a hemispheric field of white.

(This happened to me again in Jayashree’s library one day. I was there with my mom and we were all talking and I had what Patanjali called a misunderstanding. I am terrified of yoghurt. It makes me physically sick, like really, really, violently ill. Someone handed me what looked like a powdered donut on a plate with a spoon. I was so busy concentrating on my mom and Jayashree the ludicrousness of this thought – why would there be a powdered donut in India? - passed me by. I mistook a rope for a snake, and as I spooned a chunk of “powdered donut” into my mouth, I was immediately and powerfully overwhelmed by the sensation of a Curd-Vada! Yoghurt! (what my dad blithely calls Yoga). Right then and there, I passed out into a sea of whiteness, flat out on the library floor).

Back in the Puck Building, moments later, I have no idea now how long, the field of whiteness passed and Sharath was still there staring at me. It could have been 3 seconds or 30. Something terribly awkward -- I don’t know. He smiled at me. I pranamed to him, and smiled back at my teacher.​Gazing is essential to yoga. As Richard Freeman said, “Yoga is the aesthetic experience.”

Willem Dekooning’s Havana, 1958

When we gaze at a sunset, at a DeKooning, or at our lover, we are staring into the heart of Krishna. We are gazing at the Krishnaness of Krishna. We are staring at the essential nature of DeKooningness in a DeKooning. We are seeing our own self in the Heart and Eyes of The Beloved.In this moment, the face relaxes, the eyes soften, the tongue loosens, and tension releases. We are in Love. The brain literally slows and lengthens its wave to a slower Alpha, or even the nonlinear dream-like state... the Theta-wave. Theta is the aesthetic experience. When we stare and coolly gaze at our canvas -- the ideas flow from our own true nature.

There is no place to be but Here. Wherever Here is.

There is no time but Now. Whatever Now is.

Nothing means anything. It just Is.-H-

Any final thoughts?

Thank you Lu!

I think maybe I would like to finish with some thoughts on face and what it means to mimic and act like your teacher... like when we use the Buddha as a guide for how to sit and how to make the right face… some thoughts on authenticity, really.It’s so interesting. In the work that I do with kids in schools, the term “mindfulness” is so prevalent that it makes me question the usage as you don’t have to dig too deep to see that Jon Kabat-Zinn coined “mindfulness” to appropriate Burmese Buddhism to institutional venues. You would think that the kneejerk reaction for these secular organizations when they discover the origin of the word would be “wait... isn’t that a religion?” and consequently, they would shut their wellness program right down. However, this is never the case. Maybe they just don’t look it up? Maybe ignorance really is bliss? I’d like to argue that if we are going to use meditation techniques in civic life, we should call it what it is. For transparency’s sake, we could just say “contemplative practices.”

The true irony here is that Buddhism is not a religion. (Though it is often treated as religion by its adherents, in that if you call yourself a Buddhist and bow to the Buddha and ask the Buddha to improve your financial well being, then you are treating this system of philosophical self inquiry as religious practice. By this definition, being a New Orleans Saints fan is also a religious practice).

My understanding of the origins of Buddhist practice (and yoga for that matter) is one of existential or phenomenological philosophy though a heuristic process. We enter a temple and that space has a particular effect on us as human beings. Vaulted ceilings, refracted light, and soft ambient sound lengthens the brainwaves of human beings. Sitting down and modelling the example of the effigy in that room has a particular effect on human beings as well. Smiling slightly with a straight spine has the effect of practicing happiness. The breath has room to expand, and the brain believes itself to be happy when it finds it’s own face smiling.

So the practice of emulating happiness with the body reinforces happiness in the brain. (See Tara Kraft’s full study in the journal Psychological Science "Grin and Bear It: The Influence of Manipulated Positive Facial Expression on the Stress Response").

And this reminds me of what Dharma Mitra said when he took Sri Swami Kailashananda as a Guru: that he did everything in his power to mimic the way his teacher walked, thinking that would be the way to absorb his great knowledge.When I was finishing my BFA at SAIC in Chicago in 1997, I was writing my graduate thesis paper on assimilation. Specifically how Japan has historically absorbed Western influences into its culture and made them uniquely “Japanese.” And by Western I mean Korea. (We are East of Japan after all).

Activities like flower arrangement, Sumo, and Buddhism all came to Japan through Korea, and came to be considered ‘authentically Japanese’ through their research and innovative development of these specific disciplines. Of course they fit into what is ‘uniquely Japanese’ in the first place. A culture that inherently reveres the worship of nature, like its own intrinsic Shinto, would probably want to aestheticize Buddhism, and would be drawn to an excessively ritualized method, a minor offshoot of Chinese Mahayana Ch’an, renamed Zen.

However, Japan’s quest in the early 20th century to absorb Impressionism floundered. The fad for painting Impressionism did not and has not yet become uniquely Japanese. Abstract Impressionism did much better, and that might be due to Japan’s historical favor of brush painting or “action painting.” The oil paintings of “Zen” circles by Jiro Yoshihara are a perfect example.

Jiro Yoshihara with “Work” 1965 oil on canvas

So I asked my Asian Art history advisor at that time, Stanley Murashige:

“When does something become learned? How do we actually learn something?”

As Edward Said said “What the Occidents call Japan does not exist, but is rather.”

I asked this knowing that my research of cultural assimilation had an internal motivation... When will my practice of Yoga become authentic?When will baseball become Japanese? At what point will I stop being a “White American Douche Doing Yoga” and then truly become a Yogi? (a W.A.D.D.Y.??)

When do we authentically become what we are striving for?

I am very much aware that with the rise of Hindutva (Hindu nationalism) in India there is a notion that you must be Indian to authentically practice yoga and understand yoga. Anyone else, it suggests, is practicing culturally convenient appropriation. I myself believe you should travel to India to understand yoga. This internalized racism, however, belies the truth of the practices.

They work on human beings.

Sri. T. Krishnamacharya with Eugenie Peterson (Indra Devi)

To this point, Japanese Sumo is dominated by Mongolians. (My personal fan favorite, the yokuzana Asashoryu). Perhaps 300 years from now world culture will believe that “Ashtanga Yoga” is that thing that Japanese people do… If this is so it will be because of adherence to this sutra:

Perfection in practice comes when one continues to practice with sincerity and respect for a long period of time without any interruption.What is it then that is truly authentic?Is it when the seer resides in the Self?

Is Sumo - the excessively fetishized version of Ssireum (Korean Sumo) - still authentic wrestling? Or is it a new form? Is the butterfly or the caterpillar the more authentic version of itself?When does something change form enough that it becomes something other, and restores authenticity to its Self?Like when Jon Kabat-Zinn practices mindfulness, is he inherently authentic due to his life long and sincere practice? Or is he still a caterpillar pretending to be a butterfly?

Isn’t it authentic to be of undisputed origin? So is the Allman Brother’s version of rock and roll more authentic than the Monkees commercially exploitive drivel due to their origin in the American South?​This is far too simplistic. How many bands come out of the south that could not escape cultural appropriation? My close friends all know my bitter disregard for Lynyrd Skynyrd. Whereas The Band (with 4 out of 5 Canadian members) crafted songs that are now embedded in the American Folk songbook; and the Rolling Stones (though British and upper middle class) transcend caste, class, colonialism, and geographical origin with their B-flat sound, nurtured such as it was, with decades of practice, and what artist Lenore Malen told me was “raw animal sex.” And didn’t the Beatles become something else altogether that the chitlin circuit had never seen? And yet, even Soul God Otis Redding was left gasping, profoundly moved by Sgt. Pepper’s newfound manifestation.

So Michael Jackson is an incredibly interesting example. Though born a Soul savant and virtuoso within the Jackson 5, the songs are still limited and commercially pandering. With 20 years of development and practice he becomes Michael Jackson - ‘the authentic’ king of pop. (Who, in this room, wouldn’t get up and dance to Billie Jean right now?) As my friend, Nicholas Evans once said, “Michael Jackson, He is so Great!”

Really we’re asking is: What is Soul? And when does whiteboy have it? The etymology of the word Authenticity comes from the Greek: Autos -- “the Self” and Hentes -- “the Doer.” Yes, authenticity means the Seer resides in the Self. When an artist becomes authentic, she transcends space and time, and the work itself leads others closer to God.What you are looking for is Doing the Looking…I best leave it there.

This has been an amazing process, Lu. I am so grateful you reached out to me. Thank you. And thank you to my exquisite editor, Harmony Slater. ​